Can I vent a little bit, please? It's been awhile since I whined to the internets and I need to get this off my chest.

This morning was one of 'those' mornings that really sucked. Nothing out of the norm, really, and some mornings have been even worse. But for whatever reason, this morning was just difficult on all fronts.

The kids went back to daycare today after being away for a week, since Lori was off for vacation days, so that in itself was a huge adjustment. I absolutely despise the hurried hustle and bustle of work day mornings---'Come on, Truman---we have to get dressed. Hurry up and eat your breakfast. We need to get going or we are going to be late. Please put on your coat/shoes/hat. And Cecelia, did you REALLY just poop your pants as we are walking out the door?! Ugh.'

Except she isn't pooping in her pants right now and is pretty backed up, making her extra cranky and disgruntled. AND I'm certain that her top teeth are hurting her more than ever, all swollen and seemingly ready to pop through the gums (finally). She is just not herself, she's tired, woke up three times last night (10:30, 1:00, and up for the day at 5:00) and she is NOT liking daycare drop offs. For about three weeks now she will literally lose.her.mind when we get to Lori's. Crying real tears within an instant of walking in the door, then looking at me like I'm abandoning her. It's so sad and I know it's just a phase but it's hard. I will hold her and calm her down but then when I have to go she cries again. Lori says Cecelia is fine by the time I pull away but it's still really difficult to see my baby upset before we are apart for 8 hours.

Also, it's freaking 7 degrees outside. Seven. I hate getting the kids bundled up to get out the door in the mornings. I much preferred the last week when we could just take our merry little time waking up, getting dressed, and starting our day without time restraints. I normally love my job but I haven't seen patients in five days and I'm just not feeling it today. I'm sure once I get going the day will fly by, my kids will be fine at daycare, and I will enjoy helping others. But right now, as I pump for the first of many times today, I am just in a funk. Don't even get me started on how much I hate this darn pump right now. Over it, and I know it's a good thing to keep my supply up, to allow me the ability to nurse. I wouldn't trade that part of it but the time commitment of pumping three times during the day, once before bed, washing pump parts and bottles, preparing milk----it's all so annoying to me now.

Have I unloaded on you enough yet?

I have to get started on my work day and don't have time to read this post for errors, or to lessen the whiny-ness. I have a feeling a lot of other mamas out there have mornings/days/weeks like this, too----when everything is just hard and annoying and tiring. I'm tired. I'm cold. I'm ready for spring and ready to sleep again.

But I do have really cute kids (who I will miss dearly today, I'm sure) and I have a great, flexible job that I enjoy. So that is how I'm going to tie up this downer post---searching for the positive. And with some cute pictures. (That you've probably already seen on IG but I like them enough to post here, too).

Come on, day. Let's get this thing started so I can see my babes again.

I've added a few things to Cecelia's nursery and must share the updates, since her room is still my favorite of the whole house and I'd never miss a chance to post more pictures of it;)

First, I've wanted a bookshelf in the nursery for some time because piling her books inside the closet was just depressing. But I didn't know what kind of bookshelf to get and I couldn't really visualize where we'd place it in the room. A few days of Craigslist hunting and I knew I'd found it: a 'Pottery Barn' real wood bookshelf that was 6 years old and in good condition. I'm not sure it's REALLY a PB piece but whatever---it's adorable and I don't think I'm even going to paint it like I had originally thought. The green windows and roof goes nicely in her room and off-sets the vast amount of pink we have going on;) We didn't even have to rearrange the room much at all---just put the crib on a different wall and everything else stayed. Yay.

You can also see her cursive name which is one of my other projects I'll mention in a bit. Also, please note that we dropped her crib mattress. Therefore she is sooooooo big and my back hurts sooooooo much when putting her in the crib. I realize it doesn't help matters when I'm holding my breath and praying that she remains asleep as I place her down there, because body mechanics are not at the top of my priority list when I'm focused on willing my baby to sleep.

It's a little bookshelf that could actually be a dollhouse at some point, I guess. It was heavy as heck to carry up the stairs with Nate (ahem, while I watched Nate carry it alone) and it was a pill to switch cars one day while Nate picked up the bad boy near his work. But she's here now and she is a beauty. I love how all of my CL purchases end up being a lot of manual labor for Nate, but even he really loves this bookshelf so I don't feel too badly about making him work for it a bit.

Cecelia doesn't have many books of her own so Truman kindly helped me sort through his massive stash and give her the 'baby books.' And then I had to pull down a bunch of old baby toys from the attic to fill the shelves even more. For some reason CC's room is the new favorite play-zone....must be all of the 'new' toys to re-discover;) I'd still like to get some cute trinkets just for C to fill the shelves but for now this works. It's kind of disgusting how many toys we have stored, actually. At least she has a few pink stuffed animals and two cute picture frames that she can claim as her own.

You can kind of see this set up before I added her cursive name on the wall. More on that later, still, but isn't this dollhouse the cutest? I seriously love Craigslist so much and have found amazing pieces on there for years now. It takes a lot of luck, I think, but so far so good with us!

The little windows are my fave!

And now for the explanation of her name: when we rearranged the crib to be on the other wall, and added the bookshelf under the big fabric-coveed 'C' I was so happy that everything fit together nicely and it didn't seem too crowded at all. But the C was off centered above the bookshelves and it was bugging.me.to.death. I cannot handle when wall decor isn't perfectly centered which is sort of like my major aversion to placing beds in the corner at an angle, or having area rugs and furniture pieces at weird angles in the room. Cannot handle that, people! It's a weird OCD thing of mine, but seriously it makes me shudder to see giant beds coming out of corners. I apologize if that is your style---it's always been a quirk of mine to despise asymmetry/I need things to sit flush to the walls or I start twitching. ;)

So anyway! The C was too far on the left of the bookshelf. So immediately I wanted to spell out her entire name to make the whole thing centered above the peak of the roof. I could have moved the C but really didn't want to do that (lazy) and it's a huge wall that needed a little extra pizzaz anyway. I found this pin on Pinterest that I immediately loved. But the problem is that the 'wire reinforced clothes line' they said to use was not at Home Depot like they said it would be. I didn't feel like hunting around the city for a stiff wire that could be bent into shapes. I got a little crazy and grabbed two wire hangers from my closet, two kinds of pliers from the basement and nearly killed my hands trying to bend these wires into letters. It sort of sucked and it's not as perfect as the Pinterest version. But it worked and I like it!

I had wrapped the letters 'perfectly' with yarn, meaning it was very smooth and only one little row of yarn covered the letters. But it seemed too boring and didn't really fit the style of the bumpy/imperfect cursive that we had going on with my janky wire hangers. So I went back over the letters an extra time to make it a little more sloppy. The rugged result seems to fit a little better, I think. Part of me wishes the letters were perfectly smooth and the yarn was too, but it is what it is. A little more unique this way, I suppose.

I wrapped one of our sticker hearts for the 'i' ;)

And then I used another sticker heart to cover up an existing screw we had in the wall, from when we hung a picture frame under the 'C'. I didn't want to just remove the screw because then there would be a huge hole there (still just a big eye sore) and do not have the energy to patch and paint a hole in the wall just yet. So I added the heart over the screw and tied it up from the 'C' to kind of pull in the fabric-wrapped letter into the yarn concept. I also used to love drawing pretty letters with hearts attached to strings---it was one of my favorite fonts to draw, so it makes me smile to see a real version of it. Again, definitely a little different and not perfect but whatever!

(can't even see the dangling heart here, but you can see it above--should have taken more pictures.)

Besides the new bookshelf and new name, I also made a little felt wreath for Cecelia's closet door. My mom had made me a felt scarf for Christmas but I had to be honest when I said it wasn't really my style for a scarf, but I wanted to use it in the nursery somehow instead. Mom had the idea of curling it into a wreath instead (Pinterest inspired yet again!) and I loved that idea. I cut a big circle out of an old cardboard box, cut out a hole in the middle, and then glued the scarf onto the cardboard. Had to work the felt a little bit to make it turn nicely, but otherwise it was pretty easy! Mom sent extra tiny flowers to make the wreath have more dimension. Where would I be without my mother? Seriously. I get all of my craftiness from her but I definitely have not mastered the felt flower yet. But a hot glue gun is my friend and I can totally handle glueing her creations together!

Now the only other thing I want to add to the nursery is a small side table next to the rocker. I plan to hunt on CL again and maybe rummage sales this spring, because I can picture exactly what I want in my head. I want it to be round and vintage-style, with some curves or decorative flair. Then I want to paint that bad boy pink---but a lighter shade than the crib. It might take a little hunting to find my vision on this one.

I want my imaginary table to go right here---next to Truman's arm. My little helper had to be in these pictures, of course. I never mind having my kids and the chaos of life in 'reveal' pictures though. Makes it much more authentic!

Cecelia's nursery version 2.0. Love this little room so much and I think my girl is starting to appreciate parts of it, too.

Not looking forward to the day when she demands to decorate her room without my help. Lord help me if she doesn't love pink. ;)

This time it's CafePress that contacted me and they want to provide a $25 gift certificate to use on their website. I've definitely been on their website many times after googling things like, 'personalized birthday tee shirts' or 'personalized big brother tee shirt'. So I guess I knew they had tee shirts, but woah---there is a LOT more on the site than I knew.

Chevron area rugs (that Nate would never ever allow, except POSSIBLY in Cecelia's room, but even that would be pushing it, I think. I have come to realize that pink and purples will only grace the presence of the nursery. I guess I can live with that.).

Like a Boss -- I think this is supposed to be a gift for actual bosses, but I just find it awesome-slash-hilarious for myself instead;)

So to enter in the giveaway for a $25 gift card at CafePress, all you need to do is comment on this post and let us know what you would buy if you won. Please leave me your email address too, so that I can contact you if you win. You can comment from now through Wednesday February 20 and I will do a random number generator drawing on Thursday, February 21.

We are nearing the eleven year mark together, and I'm absolutely certain that God made this man for me. Eleven years that span a few college shenanigans, first jobs, a wedding, a few moves, new jobs, new degrees, and two beautiful children. My husband and I are both stubborn first borns. We are so much alike that it probably works against us at times. And I wouldn't dream of bickering with anyone else;)

I loved Nate almost immediately after meeting him, a naive twenty year old girl who hadn't felt butterflies like *this* before. I loved him on our wedding day. I loved him in those years before kids as newlyweds. But seeing him as the father of my children is beyond anything I can explain, as I'm sure many of you mamas/wives can understand. He is an amazing daddy. Truman and Cecelia are so blessed to have him as their male role model. I have no doubt that Truman will want to be Nate and Cecelia will want to marry him;) I'll gently remind her that he was spoken for years ago and hope that there is a boy out there who can live up to her expectations of what a man should be.

The day he became a dad my heart melted all over again. What a natural. What a caring, genuine, giving father he is.

And falling into the 'second time' daddy role was a cake walk for this guy.

Because he is the level-headed one. The one who calms me down and talks sense into me when I'm being all dramatic and estrogen-filled and ridiculous. He'll do it with a little sarcastic flair that makes me snap out of my doom and gloom standpoint. Because he is our rock and our leader (as much as I like to think I wear the pants in the marriage) ;)

My boys are the best.

And then she came along and made him a 'girl dad'. I'm not going to lie, the first few months she broke my heart when she wanted nothing to do with the big guy in glasses. A bit finicky, a bit particular, and REALLY attached to the boob. I hated when she would not let Nate rock her to sleep, to calm her, to give her a freaking bottle. It weighed heavily on my shoulders when Nate would say, 'She doesn't want me, she wants you.' I mean, OBVIOUSLY a breastfed baby will want her mother when she is losing her freaking mind (the baby, not the mother---but it's easy to see it both ways on this one). But still---Nate always had a special touch with Truman and I yearned for that with Cecelia, too.

And then? A few months ago something clicked. She started lighting up when Nate entered the room. She allowed him to give her bottles at night. They bonded. And I could breathe a sigh of relief.

And now? She has been looking right at Nate, saying, 'Dada.' I kid you not. She says it appropriately, forces him to make eye contact with her, and then smiles with all of her might. She knows her daddy at just eight months old. And she loves him.

They both do, obviously.

But this is the face she made for me when Nate walked into the room one night. Pure joy. Talk about being wrapped around her finger;)

I love this man with all I've got. I love their daddy because he is so good to them, so good to me, and because he's just Nate. My Valentine for almost eleven years. Their daddy since day one. Our Nate---that sarcastic nerd who never fails to entertain. I think we'll keep him around;)